


in the company of roses

by macbethattempest



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Darcylandweek, F/F, F/M, Friendship, wintershock mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 04:44:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7494279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macbethattempest/pseuds/macbethattempest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Will you teach me?", she speaks.</p><p>Natasha looks at her for a moment and then smiles languorously, flicking her fingers in the air.</p><p>"That and more."</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the company of roses

**Author's Note:**

> For 
> 
> Darcyland Positivity Week : Day 1 : Friendship (is magic)
> 
> I don't really want write friendships all that much but Natasha and Darcy are fabulous. Also, there's just a minor mention of Wintershock, just as a warning (?).

Darcy sleepwalks.

In the dead of the night, when everything is silent and dark and everybody is lost to their dreams, Darcy walks adrift throughout the tower.

Sometimes, she wakes up in the morning, and finds her knees slashed and cut, dried blood flaking her legs in random patterns and she tries to remember but she can't. It's only in the day when she walks by Pepper's room, that she sees the janitors hard at work and blinks in consternation and walks into the office and finds the side table toppled over, the glass shards scattered all across the floor in a mosaic, that she fits her knees to the dent in the now upright table and she understands.

Sometimes, she finds mottled bruises on her head and hands, and they ache, _oh they ache_ , and she applies ointments and make up. She's now an expert on the colour blue and red; they tell her how old the bruises are and she gets a sense of time, a sense of some control over an uncontrollable habit.

Sometimes, her head pounds and she has no idea why. People think that she just has an overactive mind with a quirk that likes storing medicines; she knows better. Aspirin is her holy grail and her stock is unlimited.

Sometimes, she wakes up so tired that she can't move and she knows she walked a lot in the night, she exerted herself and caffeine becomes her support system. Coffee, coffee, coffee and her system is up and running and when it fails, _more coffee._

Sometimes, she doesn't wake up in her bed at all. Her body clock wakes her up at five in the morning sharp, and she'll wake up in the partitioned morning, in places such as the inventory, the drawing room, the kitchen and she'll stumble back to her room, disoriented and dazed and look at her bed and the next night, she'd clutch the bed sheets as she falls asleep, the tendons in her palm standing out, but the grip can loosen, and the feet can walk.

She stumbles, she falls and she lives in a daze and then one day she doesn't.

She wakes up in her bed, her body intact, and she thinks it's a miracle, _oh a Christmas miracle_ , as she looks at the mistletoe Wanda hung by her door on Christmas Day.

And it continues, in the day, in the night, and she sleeps,

the rarest thing in the world,

and she wakes,

in her own body, in her own mind,

as a red haired assassin keeps awake in the night and watches over the girl who sleepwalks.

\----

Darcy observes.

The little assistant with brown hair and the smart mouth sees everything.

She sees how Wanda and Vision teeter around each other, she sees how Sam is devoured by the demons in his head, she sees how Steve battles the past every second, she sees how Clint yearns for his family and she sees how Natasha is absolutely, completely terrified of Bruce.

When the news hits the Avengers Headquarters in a slow creep, that Bruce has finally asked Natasha out on a date, she nearly jumps with joy. _Finally_.

But then she sees Natasha and her heart bends.

There's lots of things Natasha is confident in: in her body, in her mind, in her art but it's clear, _crystal clear,_ that in her heart, she's the person who has never loved, who has never felt loved, who is, for all intents and purposes, going on her first date.

So, on the night of the date, Darcy steels herself and gathers the greatest courage and, _behold_ , barges in on Natasha's door and into her room; a place strictly forbidden to nearly everybody. Darcy's arms shake with terror at the Widow's wrath but she strides with purpose towards a Natasha frozen mid-motion, standing in front of the mirror, dressed in a black dress, her hand at her lips, still, applying lipstick.

Darcy reaches Natasha and gently removes her hand from her lips where it's frozen and pats her lips with a tissue. "You'll blot it", she says gently. And then she proceeds to smoothen Natasha's dress which has wrinkles from where Natasha has clutched it in nervousness.

Then she takes a deep breath and begins what she remembers of her mother doing on her very first date.

Darcy fusses over Natasha, fixing the stands of her hair a bit, taking her purse and putting the date essentials in it: the lipstick, a handkerchief, a mouth spray and a compact mirror; all the while, talking casually and effortlessly about nothing and everything, while Natasha remains frozen in front of the mirror, her eyes opened wide and body as still as rock.

It's an out of body experience for the both of them; Natasha being taken care of and Darcy taking care.

As Darcy turns her back to Natasha, rummaging in the polythene bag she'd brought, for a few mints, Natasha gradually unthaws from her position, her limbs unfreezing bit by bit and Darcy hears Natasha swallow.

"So", Natasha speaks and then clears her throat. "Should I re apply my lipstick in the middle of the date?" Her voice is nearly inaudible.

Darcy turns to her, finally finding the mints, and places it into Natasha's purse. "If you feel like it", Darcy informs her. "And go to the bathroom to apply it."

Natasha nods slowly, as if absorbing vital information.

"You're ready", Darcy tells Natasha excitedly, breaking her reverie, handing her the purse and just as they are about to leave the room, Natasha clutches Darcy's shoulder and stops her and speaks with wide, fearful eyes. "Can I call you if I want to ask something?"

Darcy smiles, casually and off handedly, not showing the pure emotion she's feeling. "Sure."

Natasha calls exactly three times in the middle of the date, inquiring about whether she should have alcohol or not, whether she should just open her hair from her bun because they hurt, whether it's okay to crack a joke at Bruce's expense.

Darcy tells her everything in quick short words, experience finally paying off, and as she's about to hang up the phone the third time, Darcy whispers to Natasha, "just be yourself."

And Natasha doesn't phone again.

\----

After the battle in Sokovia, in which Darcy lost colleagues and friends from college, she realises that she did not only lose people, per se; she lost her faith.

She doesn't understand when she hears people say that "everything would get better", because she sees no path to "getting better". She's a human living in a world of super humans and she's helpless, a sheep in the lion's den with no power, and there's no way out.

A week passes, and she grieves and fears but she continues to work, overworking herself, not giving herself the time to think, and she eats and she bathes with a constant fear lurking in the back of her mind.

_Sheep in a lion's den_

_sheep in a lion's den._

It's bleak in the morning when she wakes up from a tiring sleep-she feels like she has just slept, but the time says it's been seven hours of oblivion-and she walks to the kitchen for coffee and sees Natasha sitting in one of the stools by the stove, cradling two coffee cups, looking idly at the glass wall and Darcy goes and slumps on the stool next to her, sipping and burning her tongue with the scalding liquid.

There's silence as dawn breaks and two opposites stare as the sun comes up from behind the mountains.

"Do you know what this is?", Natasha speaks into the quietude.

Darcy looks at Natasha's long and statuesque fingers and sees a nail clasped between the forefinger and the thumb as delicately as if it was breakable china.

"A nail", Darcy replies, looking up at Natasha.

"Do you know what it can do?", Natasha arches her neck and lifts the nail up in the air, twirling it between her fingers, and the she turns suddenly, staring into Darcy's eyes, breaking the trance, and leans forward, the nail right between their noses. "A single stab with this in the right vein in any man's jugular, and he's dead for good."

Darcy stares at Natasha and then back at the nail and she breathes through the nose.

Natasha turns abruptly in her stool. "Do you know what _that_ can do?", she asks, her hand pointed towards the marker lying unused near the sink. And she leans forward to pick up the marker and gives it to Darcy, who holds it gingerly in her hands. " _This_ can choke and throttle", Natasha informs.

Darcy looks up at Natasha, the marker clutched tight in her hands and sees Natasha's emotionless eyes, her own eyes burning with foreign emotion.

Darcy clears her throat and she feels as if she is on the precipice of something indescribable.

"Will you teach me?", she speaks.

Natasha looks at her for a moment and then smiles languorously, flicking her fingers in the air.

" _That_ and more."

\----

"I kill people."

"I know that."

"And I manipulate them."

"I know that too."

A swallow. "I was trained in the Red Room."

"Okay."

A clearing of throat. "Where we were taught how to kill people."

"Okay."

An exasperated sigh. "You don't care about any of that?"

Another exasperated sigh from another person. "Your past doesn't define who you are." A shuffling of chair.

A stillness pervades the air.

"Then why does Bucky's?"

Darcy stills at his name, her usually expressive eyes becoming more shuttered by the second. She turns her head away from Natasha and shifts in the chair of the lounge.

Natasha reaches across the table and taps Darcy's fork with her fork; Natasha's indirect call for an answer.

Darcy blinks but keeps looking at the ground.

"He's-", she speaks and she stops, forming words in her head that construe an adequate response. "I don't care about his past, Natasha."

"That's not what he thinks", Natasha replies readily.

"Well, that's because nothing gets through his thick skull", Darcy snaps. "He thinks he's very smart", she speaks theatrically, fluttering her fingers in the air. "Let me tell you Soviet Assasins a little secret," Darcy leans forward and rounds her eyes, as if telling Natasha a secret. "You're not."

And Natasha bursts out laughing; huge bellows that shake the diner they had scheduled their weekly dinner in.

Darcy's irritation ebbs away; it's so rare to hear the Widow laugh, that too so heartily, especially after Bruce had gone away. Darcy flashes Natasha a small smile.

Natasha sobers herself up and takes a sip of the Russian vodka and Darcy nearly tastes James on her tongue when she breathes in the scent of the Russian liquor of choice.

"Why don't you say that to him", Natasha says on a more serious note. "Maybe he just needs to truly understand the depth of your feelings."

Darcy raises her eyebrows. "You're giving me boy advice now?", she exclaims wryly.

"Me", Natasha replies, pointing to herself. "The woman trained in the red room." And she raises the wine glass in a toast to herself.

"Madame Lipsnitskaya's red room or", Darcy pretends to contemplate. "Christian Grey's."

Darcy purses her lips like she's thinking and looks into Natasha's eyes that dance with mirth.

"The world will never know."

\---

[graphic to go with this ](http://fibonaccinumbers.tumblr.com/search/darcylandweek)

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it.
> 
> All the love.


End file.
